Last month, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz appeared on the Daily Show to discuss a new partnership with Arizona State University that will allow workers to earn an online degree while still keeping their day jobs. Schultz was happy to announce that the coffee corporation would be the “first U.S. company to provide free college tuition for all [its] employees.”

However, ASU clarified that Starbucks won’t actually provide any money to help its employees afford their education. Rather, workers will have the chance to enroll in ASU’s online programs at a greatly reduced price, but will still have to pay for the remaining costs out of their own pockets, with student loans, or via federal aid.

The “Starbucks Scholarship” won’t be awarded upfront, but the company does plan to reimburse students after they pay for, and complete, their first 21 credits. Applying for financial aid can be time consuming and complex, and sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab argues that a “wholly online education is of questionable value for low-income students…[E]specially when such students are required to pay for those first 21 credits before they qualify for reimbursement.”

During this time, ASU online will likely make a profit off incoming students who are paying for their education with financial aid—continuing what sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom describes as a “long and shady history” of companies making money off public funds.

It’s hard to be fully cynical about the Starbucks Scholarship since it will likely open the (virtual) doors for many students to earn a college degree. Nonetheless, the plan hardly addresses the structural problem of an unaffordable education system. In his interview with Jon Stewart, Schultz likened the tuition benefits to employee-provided health care—a comparison journalist David Perry isn’t keen about:

The development of health care as an employee benefit rather than a universal right has been a disaster for America, leading to high costs and poor results. Yes, the employees are much better off with health care than without, much as some workers will benefit from the new tuition policy. But if making college affordable becomes a job perk, rather than a societal goal, we’re collectively worse off.

A recent Metro News article turned to social scientist Isabelle Côté for an explanation about an alarming rise in the rate of sexual assaults in Ottawa, Canada. Côté suggested that the data could point to something other than an actual increase in assaults: since Ottawa devotes resources to programs that help those who have been assaulted, Côté believes victims may be more likely to report the crime there than elsewhere.

Still, sexual assault is significantly underreported. Côté tells the paper only about 10% of sexual assaults are actually reported to the authorities. That means perhaps a number as low as 6,000 (the number reported in Ottawa last year) should be cause for concern. Côté told Metro News that issues of race, class, and gender stereotypes can influence whether the crime is reported—and whether the victim is believed.

Increasing rates of reported sexual assault may be a good thing if it means more victims are coming forward. Côté also discusses the importance of funding for rape prevention alongside support for victims. The key is to reduce assaults but dramatically increase reporting when they occur.

A recent study on school bullying offers more than just a look into the Mean Girls-style warfare taking place between high school cliques. It highlights the difficulty of social mobility and the risks that come with disrupting the status quo.

With data from over 8,000 North Carolina high school students, Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee created “a social map” of 19 North Carolina schools, documenting cases of bullying. They found that girls are victimized more often than boys, and most instances of school violence are due to a student’s perceived weakness, appearance, or sexual orientation.

Sociologists understand schools to be a space where social norms are learned and reinforced, and bullying is often a way to assert status and punish non-conformity. However, Faris and Felmlee’s research also shows that students use violence to organize and maintain social hierarchies. The study found that when students from the lower “rungs” began to move up the social ladder, their chances of being bullied increased by 25 percent.

“As kids get closer [to the top],” Faris says, “they become more involved in social combat.”

But the “luxury” of hierarchies, Faris claims, is that once students reach the top, they no longer engage in violence. With nowhere left to climb, the top 4 percent have no incentive to bully other students and their elite status protects them from being bullied.

Films tend to reduce bullying to a cliquey “nerds v. jocks” fact of adolescence, but Faris and Felmlee show that school violence doesn’t just affect unpopular students, it affects anyone who might disrupt the balance of power.

Many parents worry that college will introduce their kids to a realm of unmediated romps between the sheets, but for all the very public discussions about “hooking up,” the trend of unceremonious sex didn’t start with this generation. Despite common portrayals of unchecked, excessive sexuality on university campuses, the Millennial generation isn’t having more casual sex than the Baby Boomers did in their time. In an online article for Cosmopolitan Magazine, Charlotte Lieberman turns to sociology to explain why modern college romance (or the lack thereof) is “so screwed up.”

Lieberman draws from Michael Kimmel’s Guyland, which argues that our society rewards those who follow the “rules” of masculinity and show “no fears, no doubts, and no vulnerabilities.” This type of emotional detachment has become a common defense mechanism in the dating world, says Lieberman, as women are often applauded for taking on attitudes typical of men.

Most of my peers would say ‘You go, girl’ to a young woman who is career-focused, athletically competitive, or interested in casual sex.

Some feminists have viewed casual sex as an example of women’s liberation, as the freedom to break gender norms and act more masculine. However, according to sociologist Lisa Wade, this “freedom” doesn’t go both ways.

[No one says] “You go, boy!” when a guy feels liberated enough to learn to knit, decide to be a stay-at-home dad, or learn ballet.

According to both Kimmel and Wade, our culture celebrates “thick skin” and emotional detachment in sexuality, rather than the transgression of gender norms. Hookup culture has created a dating field with a “whoever-cares-less-wins” attitude.

With emoticons and emojis replacing emotions, another complication of modern-day dating, according to Lieberman, is modern-day technology. Text messaging has become a main form of communication, and Millennials have developed self-screening skills that model Kimmel’s rules of emotional distance.

[When responding to a guy’s text,] it can’t be 10 minutes on the dot, because then it is obvious you were waiting. It should be longer than 15 minutes to show you’re not desperate but within the 45-minute window if you are trying to lay groundwork for that evening.

What is “screwed up” about dating, according to Lieberman and sociologists, is not that this generation has become emotionally desensitized by casual sex, but that Millennials are looking for love in the midst of a culture that views emotional apathy as empowering and possesses the digital means to censor any emotions they may experience.

Nordic countries boast some of the highest rates of equality, economic security, and social wellbeing. Though sociologist Lane Kenworthy isn’t necessarily suggesting that the United States regulates its industries or redistributes wealth, he thinks that America should take a page or two from Sweden’s book. In an interview with The Washington Post, Kenworthy calls for a restructured welfare system and an entirely new conversation about social policy. He argues that implementing more “public insurance programs” would allow the U.S. government to help citizens cope with the economic booms and busts that come with capitalism.

Different countries have tried different things, and a lot of what I suggest we do is based on previous experiences. Paid parental leave, for example, has existed for more than a generation in some European countries, as have universal child care and preschool.

Along with universal childcare and paid leave for new parents, plenty of developed nations have adopted other social insurance policies—like universal health care and protection against lowered wages. And although Americans tend to be pretty divided when it comes to expanding federal welfare, there are domestic examples of these types of federal programs bringing, and keeping, people out of poverty.

While most conversations about lowering American inequality tend to focus on strengthening the labor movement, placing hefty taxes on the rich, or regulating corporations, Kenworthy is “pessimistic” about these solutions.

I look at what’s happened in Western European countries, and I see union density declining nearly everywhere…Nordic countries rely very heavily on public insurance and less heavily on regulation than many American progressives believe, and…it’s not as though they sock it to the rich more than we do. Their tax systems are slightly less progressive.

According to Kenworthy, solutions to inequality should focus on policies that boost “economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity.”

Although its catchy advertisement went viral, Goldiblox, the new toys encouraging girls’ interest in engineering, has been more discouraging than disruptive to some. Debbie Sterling, engineer and founder of Goldiblox, may have a refreshing aim – to increase girls’ interest in STEM by introducing them to engineering fundamentals at a young age – but why does the toy’s narrative have to be centered around beauty pageants? And why so many pink ribbons?

In an article for Al Jazeera, sociologist Lisa Wade of Soc Images explains that, because “toys are among the most heteronormative things in America,” we probably won’t be seeing one that rejects gender stereotypes altogether any time soon.

“The idea started in the ’70s that the way we should liberate women is to get them into guys’ stuff,” she said. “There’s nothing about this toy that breaks with what we tell girls to do in this country every day: model what boys do, but not break with femininity.”

Though Goldiblox supposedly addresses gender disparities in engineering programs, assuming that girls need a princess-centric toy to get them building, as opposed to good ol’ non-gendered building blocks, is not radical.

With death toll rising from the devastating typhoon in the Philippines this week, it seems that we’re constantly being reminded of the destruction of natural disasters, especially for rural and poor areas. Rural communities can be difficult to reach in times of environmental chaos, and poorer regions don’t always have the resources to cope with a crisis. When city services shut down or relief aid doesn’t come through immediately, community members band together to manage the aftermath of the disaster as best they can.

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg believes that community resources including “public places from libraries to mom-and-pop shops and coffee shops” can influence the outcomes of a crisis by providing the community the familiarity and support they need. In researching one such disaster, the 1995 Chicago heat wave, Klinenberg found that the residents of neighborhoods with more social infrastructure—like libraries and coffee shops—fared much better during the heat.

Those resources so dramatically improve the quality of our life on a regular day, but when there’s a heat wave or a hurricane or some other disaster, they can make the difference between life and death. In the Chicago heat wave, they did.

These types of social infrastructure benefit communities beyond times of crisis, according to Klinenberg who argues,

The nice thing about investing in climate security through social infrastructure is that the residual benefit is that we could dramatically improve the quality of life in these places all the time regardless of the weather. And it’s that kind of intelligent design that we desperately need at this moment.

As urban growth has swelled over the past decades, rural regions are gradually being hollowed out. Small towns have seen their populations shrink, economies suffer, and development slow as more and more people are flocking to metro areas for the economic and cultural opportunities that city-living offers.

But some people are attracted to the rustic quiet that can only be found on a front porch in a tiny town or to the appeal of living in a community where everyone knows your name. Scholars, in particular rural sociologists, are wondering what can be done to save these pockets of small-town America.

In a recent article, Bill Reimer, a professor emeritus of sociology at Concordia University in Montreal, suggests that if small towns want to endure, they’ve got to diversify and adapt. He

Surviving communities will be those that look at all of their assets – the social, cultural, environmental, not just the economic – and work at building their capacities at all of them.

He suggests, among other things, that towns should welcome immigration and build a strong infrastructure like schools, hospitals, and recreation centers. It’s kind of a “Field of Dreams” approach – if you build it, they will come (and also, in this case, stay). By taking a few of Reimer’s suggestions, small towns have the potential not only to survive, but thrive.

The Millenial Generation is coming of age in an era of low voter turnout, weak and waning labor union influence, and few civil protests compared to previous generations. Though this appears to paint a portrait of overall apathy, the young Millenials are not necessarily disengaged.

Last month, fast food workers, many of them young, in 60 cities and almost 1,000 restaurants across the country walked off their jobs in a demonstration for higher wages. In an article in the NYTimes, the workers involved in the walk-out received publicity for the “audacity of their demand,” a push to increase their hourly wages to $15. Currently, the majority of the 2.3 million fast food workers in America make no more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, well below a living wage. The media depiction of the strikers as naïve and audacious in their demands calls to mind the Occupy Wall Street movement. Once again, corporations are claiming that raising workers’ wages would place a financial burden on consumers and hurt businesses.

But if we’ve learned anything from the backlash against these protests, it’s that the situation is not black and white. Tali Kristal’s recent research, “How the Decline of American Unions Has Boosted Corporate Profits and Reduced Worker Compensation,” argues that the consumer versus poverty-wage worker dichotomy is faulty. Not only has the federal minimum wage failed to rise with the cost of living, but the literal percentage of corporate profits going to the worker is declining—with more of the profits being pocketed by already-wealthy individuals. This is happening as labor unions, which have historically defended workers’ rights, decline in power and influence. Kristal advocates a need for increased collective action in the form of labor unions and a redirected attention to where profits are actually going.

Perhaps the fast food worker walk-out is an example of this much-needed change. University of Washington sociologist Jake Rosenfeld believes that the walk-outs mark a shift in the previous decline of labor unionism and collective action, arguing, “The strikes could elevate the union movement’s standing among younger workers who have grown up in an era when unions have steadily lost membership and power.” In a generation of waning civil engagement, declining labor unions, and an overall aura of apathy, such demonstrations mark a renewed form of collective action.